Rajiv Gandhi
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Contents |
Vignettes
Sonia’s Shah Bano question to Rajiv, Bofors ‘leak’ by friend
While the book reveals several previously unknown details about what transpired behind the scenes that led to the Rajiv Gandhi government’s decision to bring a Bill to negate the Supreme Court’s order in the Shah Bano case, one anecdote stands out.
“‘Rajiv, if you can’t convince me about this Muslim Women’s Bill, how are you going to convince the country?’” Sonia had told Rajiv, according to D P Tripathi, the late NCP leader who was then a member of Rajiv’s inner circle. “You must stand by the Supreme Court judgment,’ she told him. “This Sonia said in my presence,” the book quotes Tripathi as saying.
It was the Bofors scandal which finally led to Rajiv’s undoing. The influence his cousin Arun Nehru wielded on him is known and well documented. The two fell apart. Arun held Sonia responsible for the break-up. In October 1986, Rajiv dropped Arun as a Minister in a Cabinet reshuffle.
“After the swearing-in, a restive Rajiv again asked Fotedar to accompany him back to Race Course Road. “Rajivji was tense,” Fotedar said afterwards. As the car reached Race Course Road, they saw Sonia Gandhi and Gandhi family loyalist Captain Satish Sharma waiting in the portico. Sonia had a wide smile on her face. ‘I understood then why Arun Nehru had been dropped,’ Fotedar said later,” the book says.
“Arun Nehru…was biding his time. He struck only when he was ready—and that was a year later in 1987. Swedish Radio did a programme…based on the testimony of a former employee of Bofors—that Bofors had paid bribes to Indian politicians. ‘It was Arun Nehru who leaked the Bofors story to the Swedish Radio,’ H. R. Bhardwaj told me (the author). ‘We knew it.’” the book says.
In October 1986, Rajiv dropped Arun Nehru as a Minister in a Cabinet reshuffle.
Assassination
1991:
India Today December 29, 2008
It was a high-profile political assassination born out of a complex plot but simple security failures.On May 21, 1991,Rajiv Gandhi fell to a female suicide bomber, Thenmozhi Rajaratnam,of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, at Sriperumbudur, 40 km from Chennai, when he was campaigning for the Lok Sabha.
“If only the basic procedures provided for in the blue book on VVIP protection were followed, the tragedy could have been averted,”said India Today in June 1991.
At the election rally venue there was no perimeter security, no barricading, no metal detectors and no sniffer dogs.
Man jailed because CBI officer hid facts
Almost 18 years after Perarivalan was convicted as a plotter in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, a former CBI officer involved in the investigation has told the Supreme Court that the convict did not know of the plan to kill the former PM.
V Thiagarajan also said Perarivalan’s statement about not being aware of the plot was not recorded in his confession,which was heavily relied upon by courts to convict him, as this would have favoured the defendant.
Now, Thiagarajan has filed an affidavit in the SC and explained the reason for the “omission”, and virtually supported Perarivalan’s plea for remission of the sentence.
“It is humbly stated that accused Perarivalan’s statement that he was totally in the dark as to the purpose for which the batteries were purchased was not recorded by me, because it would be an exculpatory statement and hence the whole purpose of recording the confessional statement would be lost. Further, I did not deem it fit to record this exculpatory statement because the investigation regarding the bomb was pending at the time of recording the confessional statement,” he said in his affidavit.
In an interview with TOI in 2013, Thiagarajan had said Perarivalan, in his confession before him, admitted that he purchased the batteries.
“But he said he did not know the batteries he bought would be used to make the bomb. As an investigator, it put me in a dilemma. It wouldn’t have qualified as a confession statement without his admission of being part of the conspiracy. There I omitted a part of his statement and added my interpretation. I regret it,” he said, adding that if he had a chance, he would have corrected the mistake.
Thiagarajan justified his decision to file the affidavit, saying he had grown concerned at Perarivalan languishing in jail with declining prospects of release. The 1981-batch IPS officer had recorded the confessional statements of Perarivalan alias Arivu in 1991, wherein he was said to have admitted that he purchased two batteries and handed them to Sivarasan — the leader of the assassination squad — to be used to detonate the bombs to kill the former PM. Perarivalan also stated he was in the dark about the assassination plan.
“We were not sure at that time about the part played by Perarivalan in the conspiracy but as the investigation progressed there was confirmation about the ignorance of the said accused relating to conspiracy...” Thiagarajan said.
The officer’s statement is contradictory to the SC verdict, which had, in 1998, held “we therefore reach the conclusion that A-18 (Arivu) was actively involved in the criminal conspiracy to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi”.
Perarivalan’s lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan told a bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Navin Sinha that his client was languishing in solitary confinement for just procuring the batteries and the CBI had not been able to interrogate the man who had made the bomb. The court asked the Centre to respond to the statements made by the former officer and the petitioner.
Politics and the convicts
V Mayilvaganan, May 19, 2022: The Times of India
Chennai: The demand for Rajiv case convicts’ release was an issue that had little electoral impact, but one that no party could afford to ignore. It spawned competitive politics in the state and shaped the Tamil nationalistic discourse, often droving a wedge in the Centre-state relationship. Former DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, who had to pay a heavy political price after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and could not express his sympathy for the convicts openly for the next few years, had to change track eventually. His arch rival J Jayalalithaa, who attacked Karunanidhi as an anti-national for supporting the LTTE, too had to make a Uturn. For about 20 years, the demand for release of the convicts by Dravidian parties hogged political space. “The issue, although always alive, had electoral impact only in 1991,” said Observer Research Foundation director N Sathyamoorthy.
Politicking over the convicts’ release began within days of them being sentenced to death in 1998. The first major political decision on the issue was taken by Karunanidhi when he chaired a cabinet that recommended commutation of the death sentence to Nalini, in 2000. Over the years, politics around the case grew to be a peculiar one with arch-rivals taking the same stand — DMK and AIADMK supporting their release, Congress and BJP opposing them — said noted S V Rajadurai, writer and campaigner against death penalty. Itwas Congress which remained in a delicate position as it could neither oppose the release vociferously, for fear of being branded anti-Tamil, nor support it. For much of this period, it was a DMK ally and had to do a tightrope walk. Even after Sonia Gandhi and her family declared that they have pardoned the convicts and would accept any legal outcome, TN Congress could never come out in support of their release. On Wednesday too, TN Congress said, “We don’t want to criticise the SC judgement. At the same time, we reiterate that the convicts are not innocent. ” Perarivalan’s release would put an end to the politicking, but in all likelihood has added fuel to another issue — powers of governor versus the state government.
